Understandably reluctant to get entangled in foreign adventures after the war in Iraq, Barack Obama’s administration has been so keen to make a break with the past that it has failed over Syria to recognise that inaction often has deadlier consequences than action.
According to the dictum attributed to Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Yet evil will triumph even more easily if good men help the evil-doers. In the Syrian civil war, with more than 80,000 dead and no end in sight, that is what the European Union has been doing, by upholding an arms embargo on the supply of weapons to all sides.
Torture devices and evidence of abuse have been found in government-controlled prisons in the city of Raqqa, the first city to come under the control of the opposition, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims.
The international community has so far failed to fulfill its full duties towards the Syrian people. This must change.
We will be presenting a petition calling upon the government to support the Syrian people using all possible political, diplomatic and economic means.
